Henry V as Warlord

by Seward, Desmond

  The late A. R. Myers’ explanation of this extraordinary episode is almost certainly the correct one, and demonstrates just how ruthless Henry V could be, even towards the most harmless members of his own family. The plot can only have existed in the mind of Friar Randolf, presumably crazy and recognized as such by the king. But the queen dowager was entitled to a dowry of over £6,000 a year, a very heavy expense for a government whose total regular income was little more than £56,000; during her imprisonment she never cost more to keep than £1,000 in any one year. An increase in revenue of £5,000 per annum would have been of crucial importance to a ruler who was only just staying afloat financially. It also explains why Joan was never brought to trial; if she had been, she would have been acquitted, thus depriving the government of her dowry. On his deathbed Henry ordered her release and the restoration of her possessions and income ‘lest it should be a charge unto Our conscience’, a tacit admission that the whole affair had been trumped up. For the rest of her life until her death in 1437 she was treated with the utmost respect and consideration. Clearly, few people had believed in the story that she was a royal witch.

  One aspect which Myers ignores is that Joan’s son was the Duke of Brittany. John V had not seen her for many years, and was in any case a man with little family feeling. Nevertheless it would be extremely embarrassing for the duke if his mother was proved publicly to be a witch – he was not to know there was no case – and on at least one occasion he demanded to know what was being done with her. John was flirting with the dauphinists – later he would briefly desert his alliance with the English – and Henry would have had no scruples about using this particular threat against him.

  Another relative was even more profitable. Few English prelates, not even Cardinal Wolsey, have been as blatantly avaricious as the king’s uncle, Bishop Henry Beaufort. In 1417 he had resigned the chancellorship of England and gone to Constance where a council of the Church was seeking to end the schism. When a new pope, Martin V, was at last elected, he curried favour with him. Martin hoped to extinguish the Statute of Provisors, which did not allow papal nominations to English benefices; he therefore appointed Beaufort papal legate in England and offered him a cardinal’s hat. In 1419 Beaufort was warned by his angry nephew, who confiscated the bull naming him legate, that he had infringed the Statute of Provisors and risked losing all his goods and being degraded from his see. Most unwisely, Beaufort tried to obtain a fresh bull. Henry, through the bishop’s cousin and confidant, Thomas Chaucer, who was secretly in the king’s pay, informed him that he was facing ruin in earnest. The example of Joan of Navarre had not been wasted. Beaufort became so terrified that in 1421 he lent his nephew over £17,000, increasing his loans to him to the enormous sum of £38,000.

  An estimate submitted to Henry in May 1421 showed him that he was operating on the brink of financial disaster, as he must have guessed in any case. He was obsessed with money. We know from an undated letter that, despite all his difficulties, he had at one period during his reign reserves kept at Harfleur of £30,000 in gold coin, £2,000 in silver coin and blocks of silver weighing half a ton.8 He was not above checking figures himself. Early in 1421 he examined the accounts of a former Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, a man who had been dead for four years, accounts which in any case would have automatically been audited by the treasury sooner or later, and indicated items which he wished to be queried. It was not that he was in any way a miser. It was simply that he was determined to find the resources to pay for his conquest of France – resources which only existed in his imagination.9

  His desperation at this date is understandable. Parliament had refused to grant more money at a moment when still more bad news was coming out of France. Dauphinist morale had soared after Baugé while that of the English sank correspondingly. The latter no longer seemed invincible, as they had ever since 1415, a consideration of vital importance for scanty forces occupying a vast area of territory and defending very long frontiers.

  Salisbury, the new King’s Lieutenant, assembled fresh troops, sent out scouts to locate the various uncoordinated dauphinist forces about to march into Normandy and attacked each separately in turn, causing the dauphin to abandon the siege of Alençon and any idea of invading Normandy. The earl then raided deep into Anjou, afterwards reporting to Henry that ‘we broughten Hom the farest and grettest Prey of Bestes’ – meaning that whole herds of horses, cattle, sheep and pigs had been seized from the wretched peasants – and that he and his men were rested and ready to strike again.10 Even so, Salisbury had been very lucky that the enemy, who vastly outnumbered his little army, had not joined forces to invade Normandy. Instead they turned west and laid siege to Chartres.

  Yet the dauphin’s change of direction was alarming enough. For he took Montmirail and menaced Paris. The capital was now more or less blockaded by his skirmishers, whom Parisians were threatening to admit in the way they had Burgundians in the past. The Duke of Exeter and his tiny garrison were cut off. Fortunately for the English the dauphin was badly advised and did not concentrate his troops. As it was, Henry was on the verge of losing Paris.

  In addition there was trouble in Picardy. Here Jacques d’Harcourt (whose county of Tancarville in Normandy had been confiscated by Henry and given to the late Sir John Grey) was attacking isolated English and Burgundian strongholds with some success. It is likely that his activities seriously alarmed both the burgesses of Calais and Duke Philip. In the king’s words, Picardy needed ‘better governance’.

  Somehow, in the midst of all these urgent preparations for war, King Henry found time to turn his pious attention to the Benedictines, whom he decided were in dire need of reform. He may have had political motives, or at least been influenced to some extent by memories of the monks’ former political sympathies. The community of Westminster had included some strong and vociferous supporters of Richard II and those of Shrewsbury and Wenlock had connived at Sir John Oldcastle’s escape despite his heresy – almost certainly out of distaste for the Lancastrian usurpation. The ‘old English black monks’ could be undeniably aggressive; a monk archdeacon of Westminster was reputed to wear full armour on occasion. Men who did not accept that God had inspired the House of Lancaster’s seizure of the throne of England must surely have unsound spiritual as well as political values. Yet his interference in their affairs, in almost Tudor style, probably stemmed even more from his determination to assert the royal will in every area of ecclesiastical life. A complaint by ‘certain false brethren’ that the Benedictines had slackened in the observance of their rule met with a most sympathetic hearing from the king. He consulted the prior of Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire, Dan Robert Layton, (himself a former black monk) as to what to do; the Carthusians, ‘never reformed because never deformed’, were the most respected religious brotherhood of the age on account of their austerity and genuine sanctity, though as hermits they were scarcely best suited to advise monks who lived a communal life.11

  On 5 May 1421 the king addressed a special assembly of nearly 400 Benedictines in the chapterhouse at Westminster, exhorting them to mend their ways. He reminded them how generous his ancestors had been to them, how this generosity was inspired by a desire for their prayers, but how such prayers could continue to be effective only if the brethren returned to a proper observance of their rule. He read out Prior Layton’s criticisms and suggestions. A committee was appointed by the monks to report on the problems. In the event Henry soon returned to France and the black monks neatly shelved the matter. Had the king lived another decade they might well have had to implement draconian proposals.

  Henry had never intended to leave France for very long and preparations for a new expeditionary force had been in hand from the moment he returned to England. It consisted of a mere 900 men-at-arms and 3,300 archers, which was all the king could afford, though it was supported by a mass of supernumeraries such as gunners, sappers and engineers. The expedition assembled at Dover and was ready to embark at the end of May, a fine fea
t of logistics. Henry’s decision to sail to Calais instead of Harfleur – the nearest bridgehead into endangered Normandy – has been criticized but is understandable. The threat to Picardy was too grave to ignore and it was essential to reassure Duke Philip and the Burgundians. Moreover the voyage from Dover to Calais took only a few hours if tides were properly calculated, as opposed to perhaps several days sailing from Southampton to Harfleur.

  XVII

  Meaux Falls

  ‘For other weapon is there remedy

  But on the dart of hunger is to die.’

  A fifteenth-century translation

  of Vegetius’s De Re Militari

  ‘In the year of 1422 I saw a foreign king gain glory from our shame and ignominy, batten on our plunder, cast scorn on our exploits and our courage.’

  Alain Chartier, Le Quadrilogus Invectif

  Henry marched out of Calais almost as soon as he landed, early in June 1421. His first step was to send a relief force to the beleaguered Exeter at Paris. He took his main army, even smaller in consequence, down to Montreuil, twenty-five miles south, to confer with the Duke of Burgundy. Here the king agreed to dispatch the bulk of his troops to Chartres to relieve the besieged Burgundians, while he himself went on to Paris with a handful of men. Duke Philip rode with him as far as Abbeville and en route they had a day’s boar-hunting by way of relaxation. One may be sure that it was suggested by the duke – nothing so frivolous would normally have occurred to Henry on campaign.

  He entered Paris late in the evening on 4 July. He found the Duke of Exeter in control, more or less, though presumably very glad to see him. For not only had the capital been menaced by foes outside the walls but there had been considerable unrest within.

  Much of the unrest had centred around l’Isle Adam. Chastellain (who almost certainly met the marshal) tells us that, after secret instructions from Henry before his departure from Paris the previous December, Exeter had him suddenly arrested and sent under strong guard to the Bastille – now the English headquarters. According to Chastellain, ‘when the rumour ran through the city that l’Isle Adam had been seized a large mob of common people took up hatchets and hammers [à hacques et à macques], planning to rescue him and remove him by force from English hands, but found themselves facing six score of English archers, all with bows strung, shooting at them … And so he was put in the Bastille and held in prison so long as the king his enemy lived who, had it not been for fear and favour of the Duke of Burgundy his master, would have had his head off.’1

  Henry’s appearance had a calming effect on the Parisians, since we hear of no more disturbances of this sort. He found time to visit his parents-in-law, Charles VI and Queen Isabeau, at the Hôtel de Saint-Pol and to hear Mass at Nôtre Dame. However, he left his French capital after spending only four days there.

  The king then went to his old headquarters at Mantes. Here he conferred once more with the Duke of Burgundy before setting off to relieve Chartres. However, as he approached the city he was told that the dauphin had already abandoned the siege and was hastily retreating southwards into Touraine, on the unconvincing pretexts that he was running short of food, that the weather was bad, and that his men were deserting. The true reason was of course that he had heard of his supplanter’s return and was not going to risk a battle. King Henry thereupon marched on Dreux instead, some fifty miles west of Paris. This was the only substantial stronghold left to the dauphinists on this side of the capital, on the border between Normandy and the Île de France. It was invested on 18 July, the direction of the siege being entrusted to the Duke of Gloucester and the King of Scots. Despite a gallant defence by both its garrison and its townsmen, Dreux surrendered on 20 August, and at the news a whole string of lesser dauphinist strongpoints north and west of Chartres also opened their gates to the English.

  The king then struck down towards the Loire, hoping to bring the enemy to battle but, says the First Life, ‘against him came no man, nor no enemy abode his coming’. He heard that the dauphin was assembling a big army near Beaugency on the north bank of the Loire. Accordingly, on about 8 September he stormed Beaugency (though its citadel held out), and then sent the Earl of Suffolk across the river with a small detachment to see if he could locate the enemy army or provoke it into action by inflicting as much damage as possible. However, the dauphin was not to be drawn. Henry then marched along the north bank of the Loire to Orleans nearby, burning its suburbs in which his men found much-needed provisions. He set up his camp outside but his army, by now probably numbering less than 3,000 men, was too small to besiege so large a city with any prospect of success. After resting his men for three days, he swung north-east towards Joigny.

  What Jean Juvénal calls ‘a marvellous pestilence of stomach flux’ had broken out among the troops. Henry provided as many carts as he could for those who could not walk. Nevertheless, ‘Dead soldiers were found along the roads … and others [still alive] in the woods around Orleans by country folk who had gone there to hide and keep out of the way, and who killed many of them.’2

  In addition, so one gathers from the Croniques de Normandie, Henry had lost not only many men during his march from sickness but others who collapsed from hunger, besides having to abandon a great number of horses, carts and pack-mules through lack of fodder. He nonetheless kept on undaunted. One has to respect such a leader.

  On 18 September he captured Nemours and on 22 September Villneuve-le-Roy on the River Yonne, which had been preventing supplies from Dijon reaching Paris. He also took another dauphinist stronghold, Rougemont, which he stormed with a speed that astounded its dazed defenders. Infuriated by the loss of a single English soldier durings its taking, he had it burnt and its entire garrison drowned in batches in the Yonne, including some who escaped but whom he caught later; sixty men in all. Jean Chartier observes of Henry that he was a very hard and cruel dispenser of justice.3 According to the king’s lights this was ‘justice’ – as defenders of a fortress taken by storm such men had no right to their lives in the military code of the period.

  Describing the siege of Rougemont, Chastellain, who must have met many veterans who had fought against Henry or at his side, gives some idea of what it would have been like to face him. ‘The English king had them attacked most fiercely, assaulted lethally from every side, did not give them rest or respite, scarcely let them draw breath, harried them to death. If I do not describe the [castle’s] fortifications, which were the best possible, it is because they could not save them.’4 Colonel Burne thinks the secret of Henry’s success as a soldier was ‘a double foundation of discipline and fervour’ – discipline unusual in field armies of the period, coupled with his ability to communicate a savage self-righteousness. (Something not seen in English troops until Cromwell’s New Model Army.) Burne also considers that his meticulous preparations before taking the field contributed a good deal; in advance of his last campaign, one in northern France which he did not live to fight, he arranged for the citizens of Amiens to provide food for his troops, even fixing the prices.5 Above all, he was undoubtedly a born leader of men, instilling in his men his own ferocious dynamism and dogged determination. It is unlikely that his heath was good, though we do not have precise details; more than one important meeting had to be postponed because he was unwell (such as the crucial encounter with Queen Isabeau in June 1419’. We know from Walsingham that the illness which killed him was of long standing.6 Yet he let nothing deter him. If a singularly gloomy man, as he showed at moments of triumph, he can at least never be accused of pessimism in battle. According to the Monk of St Denis he maintained extraordinary equanimity during both setbacks and triumphs. He used to tell troops who had been defeated, ‘You know, the fortunes of war tend to vary. If you want to make certain of winning, always keep your courage exactly the same regardless of what happens.’7

  The monk also tells us that Henry imposed the strictest discipline. As during the Agincourt campaign, he prohibited ‘the vile prostitutes’ under ferocious penalti
es from plying their trade in the English camp as they did in the French. On this topic the king remarked sententiously that ‘the pleasure of Venus all too often weakened and softened victorious Mars’.8 Admittedly, contrary to a popular misconception, venereal disease certainly existed during the fifteenth century. Yet the prohibition, together with restrictions on drinking when possible, may well have contributed to the high rate of desertion from his armies. (As Bacon observes, ‘I know not but martial men are given to love. I think it is but as they are given to wine, for perils commonly asked to be paid in pleasures.’) In a letter home one of Henry’s men longs to go ‘out of this unlusty soldier’s life into the life of England’.

  Having cleared the Yonne valley the king marched north-west on as broad a front as his tiny army could manage, presumably to mop up any more pockets of resistance, besides inflicting as much devastation as possible. He divided it into three columns, the one to the east crossing the Seine at Pont-sur-Seine, the second to the west crossing at Nogent and the third continuing along the Yonne.